Xandyn plays a mage in World of Warcraft, participates at tournaments and is considered to perform very well. When reading over AJ I thought of an angry kid at first, but it turned out, that he is not only relaxed and healthy looking, but has insights some may call wise. We talked about past tournaments, gameplay as well as the boosting business and its aftermath.

Hildegard: Hello Lukas and welcome to the „Forscherliga Interview“. My first question is always the same in every interview: What did you eat today?

Xandyn: 3 hard boiled eggs with mayo ;D..

Hildegard: Well, eggs sound healthy.

Xandyn: yeah they are if you eat the whites, which I don't

Hildegard: OK, it seems like you did not include diet into your training program, yet.

Xandyn:

Hildegard: When I read over your posts on the AJ forum the whole pvp community sounded like a bunch of whiny "Sissies", bitching about the game. Are things that bad?

Xandyn: Things aren't necessarily that bad, balance game the game is at quite a good state, RLS and triple DPS obviously being a bit over the top, however if you compare LSD or ATC in WotLK to RLS now, well, it's much different, RLS can be a beatable comp by certain setups, while LSD was the king, I think in general the game is balanced quite well right now, a slight change to rogues/warlocks and retribution paladins, and it would be great. However, that's not the problem, first and huge problem is people just got bored of the game and the mechanics, like CS 1.6, it's a great game, right? But do people play it as much as they used to years ago? Nope. Because you just get bored of the same game, no matter how good it is. And another thing that contributes to the boredom of WoW is fucked up queue times, they should either open a perma arena pass realm, or merge all BG's into one, 10 min + queues aren't fun, and any other game offers instant play.

Hildegard: MoP starts out fresh with lots of changes. Do you think that will revive the interest?

Xandyn: for the first season yes, afterwards things will just keep getting worse and worse, because people are just losing the general interest in game, not even the game state or whatever, but WoW is a very old game, and every game eventually dies, no matter how many expansions you bring.

Hildegard: Did you take a look at GuildWars2, a game many proclaim as the next generation MMO, that will take PVP & E-Sports to the next level.

Xandyn: I have and I don't think it could ever be as good as WoW was, or is. Simply the mechanics suck, the feel of the game sucks, WoW was and still is such a great MMO because of the smooth control, and the feeling. When you play WoW you forget you even play the game, that's how good the game mechanics are, it's just soooo smooth compared to any Korean-type MMO, GuildWars 2 is just another Aion-Lineage type MMO, obviously improved a lot, but I doubt it's gonna be a very huge success, most likely it will be a good MMO, but WoW-good? No..

Hildegard: Could you give an example of how the mechanics are different to WoW?

Xandyn: The movement and the control of your character is just very different compared to WoW, it has a clunky, delayed feeling to it. Whereas in WoW the control is just as smooth as for example of any FPS game.

Hildegard: You are known to be a very avid forum poster, that does not back off flame wars and likes to provoke. True?

Xandyn: Haha, yeah I get a bit too into it sometimes, I was born and raised on the internet, just different games and forum boards before WoW. So it's something I've naturally developed to do. I was perma-banned on AJ for a while, however the ban is lifted now with a promise of mine to not get into flame wars anymore, haha.

Hildegard: How long will you keep the account?

Xandyn: Meh, I don't think I will ever get into the drama or flame wars of forums anymore, I used to care a lot about what people think of me, and how I perform in arena, etc., however the longer you play the game, the more you start to understand, that it just doesn't matter what people think, if they aren't your partners

Hildegard: Most people, gamers or not, spend their life trying to impress people they don't like.

Xandyn: yeah I suppose I agree with that statement, and I try to become someone who just doesn't care, I think the best people out there are the ones who don't care what others have to say about them, both in real life and in-game

Hildegard: I could not agree more. Did the self-confidence come from your success in games or do you have another source?

Xandyn: I think Khuna has been a huge influence of my self-confidence development, he always would tell me 'dude, just don't give a fuck what they say, why would I play with you if you weren't the best?'. Because it's true, in WoTLK, I was decent, not as good as someone like Raiku or Flyn for example. And I played with Khuna in WoTLK, but he ditched me. I understood the move, I simply wasn't good enough. So I improved my UI, binds, attitude, and played A LOT before Cata was coming I already started practising upfront with all the new spells and changes
Even before Cata was out, I already knew almost as much as I know now. So I improved a lot compared to WoTLK, and it has nothing to do with Cata gameplay I think, I just got a lot more awareness, in general my big plus is the awareness I've got. I could play WoTLK now, and be TONS better than I used to be.

Hildegard: Do you use addons to enhance your awareness?

Xandyn: I both use, and don't use addons. I think AddOns are VERY bad for your awareness. However, I think the look of customized UI is more pleasant to my eye, I hate the look of default UI, however due to big hopes of taking BlizzCon 2012, I play with default now, and I'd say my awareness is better without any addons running.

Hildegard: So, how exactly did you train your awareness. Did you use special techniques or simply played a lot?

Xandyn: Just played a lot, and tried to look at what's going more, than actually focusing on my own stuff. I'd say I still need to improve on my positioning, sometimes I have a bit weak positioning, but as far as seeing what abilities the enemy team uses, or predicting when they will use it, etc., I think I'm really good at that. People say my damage is the best part of my gameplay, and I guess I could agree to that. I have developed a playstyle of the mage, that I haven't seen anybody use. Where I don't need to cast a single spell to keep doing damage. Sure you can keep spamming lance, but will you do as much damage as I do? I doubt so. Almost never do I ice lance without a FoF proc, however I keep lancing the entire game. So people get puzzled how I pull it off, and I guess it's a secret of mine However I can say that the water elemental change, where they removed pet freeze reset upon resummoning elemental has crippled my damage a lot and it removed a lot of skill-cap, at least for me. Timing your pet resummon correctly, and building it into your rotation wasn't easy.

Hildegard: Is part of your success that you do not stream and by that show everyone how you play?

Xandyn: Nah, I would really like to stream, thing is people know how I play, they just don't know how to do it, and I doubt by watching my stream you'd be able to copy my gameplay. And I will stream actually, in 2 months after I move, and get a better connection. I'm also writing a HUGE detailed guide on arenajunkies for mage and RMP (two separate guides).

Hildegard: Care to spoiler a bit?

Xandyn: Haha, well it will just be two big guides, with how to play mage, me discussing every ability of mage and how I use it, why use it in this situation or not, etc., how I pull off so much damage without casting. The other guide will be an RMP guide, after NAO (may-april) however.
I'll talk about almost everything RMP needs to know.

Hildegard: You played some tournaments by now. The BlizzCon qualifier, GameSense, NAO Invitational and performed pretty well in all of them. However you did not manage to score a victory, yet. What was missing?

Xandyn: Well that's a big topic. Blizzcon qualifier, I got FUCKED by Blizzard. Basically what happened, I had a team with a warrior star Barburas and my priest Zunniyaki, we played Warrior-Mage-Priest, we were doing extremely well, we had a positive winrate vs every team that attended regionals, only MLS was hard comp for us to beat. However if you remember they nerfed Deep->Ring and warrior damage by 6%, removed Deadly Calm + Reckles. We tried the comp after the nerf and it was horrible, so I quickly asked Khuna to replace Barburas, Khuna left Hydra/Raiku and we qualified on the last day of TR.
However, shortly after qualifying Khuna had to leave for a holiday vacation, and we couldn't play one game until regionals, but better yet, literally while on the plane to Poland, we hear that Unheeded Warning trinket has been hotfixed to no longer give weapon damage, and RMP damage with Tier 1 weapons only was based ONLY on that trinket, we literally coordinated all our kills with the proc of that trinket, so they nerfed the trinket 1 day before regionals, and our comp became from being one of the best to horrible, we couldn't beat Shadowplay that ironically made us qualify, the same Shadowplay I beat with Barburas like 10-0 and with my RMP, beat us in regionals.
But that's not all for regionals! Vs Shadowplay it was 1-0 for us. Won the first game, we lost the second one. 1-1, lost again, 1-2, then we won, shaman complained about lagging, when there was no significant lag showing, so 1-2 again, faced them again, won again, shaman complains about lag again, back to 1-2, so we just got so demotivated that we can't win even if we win, that we just lost the last game and ended 1-3.
Not to mention the LAN was horrible in general, we came there, they had only WoTLK installed on the computers, all of the computers had to download Cataclysm, so it took ages, and the hosts didn't understand that you could download it to one PC and then share it over LAN faster.
We had to sit there all day waiting for the patch to complete, and they wouldn't even let us eat before the games, so I was in a pretty bad shape too.
It was just a horrible experience in total. Gamesense tournament was just a joke, admins invited 3 RMP teams, and then a resto shaman/enh shaman/warlock team. After that they disallow PvE gear (so to basically guarantee a win for the double shaman team).
Quickly into the tournament hosts realised that nobody would like to see double enhancement in finals, so before the games of ours, they told us to equip some PvE gear, we did, too many people complained, and we got disqualified, lol. And the double shaman team got disqualified too, so I guess it was just a cheap way to kick them out of the tournament.
Hydra who lost all his games (lost to us, then lost to double shaman), somehow got into finals?? Like they gave him a ticket back, even though he was out of the tournament? Haha. Just a joke.
The NAO tournament was very good, however the rules were lackluster, disallowing PvE gear, however letting shamans use 6200 resilience and battlemaster trinket. That's just a guaranteed win for RLS.
We got fucked by EG Shadowplay, they lost vs us on purpose, so we would get RLS in semi-finals instead of Vanguards cleave, we expected to play RLS in the finals, but got them in semis instead, so we had less room for error, since it's best of 3.. (for some reason semi finals were best of 3.. which is a very RNG thing).
We never thought we would lose to RLS, RLS is our most confident match up, however they did something we didn't expect, enemy rogue tunneling Khuna entire game, shaman in 6200 resilience and BM trinket, no PvE gear we have.
The rogue Original was playing very poor compared to Khuna, Snutz and Kollektiv did an amazing job, so counting everything they won. However, we lost 2 games. The third game on ruins we would have won 100%, had all CD's up, shaman oom, 50k hp, no mana, no cds, I had cold snap and the timer ended, we totally forgot the timer, 15 minute timer in semi finals, with no PvE gear allowed? ugh...
So sadly it was over, we lost because we underestimated our enemy, we spent countless hours of practise vs shadowplay, we got the best strat vs shadowplay, and then we lost to something we didn't expect to ever lose
Then we had an Athenelive tournament, which we ended up in the finals, vs RLS again, and that RLS was much worse than Kollektivs, however they were double undead, orc shaman, and rogue was actually specced backstab so he did damage unlike Original. But the fight ended basically the same vs RLS in athenelive, 3-1, all the games were extremely close with warlock surviving at 1%-2% hp. So we feel like vs RLS we need PvE gear to win, which we will have in upcoming NAO, they changed the rules, PvE gear is now allowed. And we will probably play human too.
Blizzcon will be another story. Blizzcon is in S9 gear. RMP was a rapist in S9 gear until they nerfed unheeded, but now instead of unheeded we have backstab damage buff, wound poison? RMP will just freewin any comp on TR.

Hildegard: Are you sure, that the tournament will be in S9 gear?

Xandyn: Yeah, according to an inside source it will be. And considering the rogue buff, rmp will be insane. RLS is not that good in S9 gear because shamans just have like 120k hp haha

Hildegard: What about the Korean PHDK with Jungyup, that surprised everyone last time?

Xandyn: It was sorta the same effect we had vs the RLS. Everyone just got surprised. That's how you win big tournaments, you surprise people with a strategy/comp nobody expects to see. That hurt us in regionals too. We were the first RMP to invent healer killing, shaman tunneling. But everyone sadly knew that.

Hildegard: Is there still room for new strategies in Cataclysm?

Xandyn: I feel like we can improve our strat a lot vs RLS, we invented a completely new strat VS shadowplay, and instead of getting raped by Splay, we win it comfortably now. There is definitely room for new strats, at least as RMP. RMP will always be viable to do just about anything to win.
That's why I play the comp, it's very satisfying.

Hildegard: You won surprisingly easy against Hydras team during the GameSense tournament.

Xandyn: Yeah, Mirlol is a truly horrible rogue, and I have no shame in saying this, because every EU player knows this. Raiku was just stressed out, because he wanted to win badly, and he's still a kid just like me. I didn't feel like he played to his potential, however one needs to remember that his prime was WoTLK, in Cataclysm he isn't as good as he used to be. And Hydra, well Hydra just didn't play correct and he admit it, he was prioritizing healing too much over dispeling his rogue, so I ended up just taking 0 damage from Mirlol.

Hildegard: Why don't your teams play on the ladder anymore? I think a lot of people, including me, would love to see a rematch.

Xandyn: Hydra cba playing with Mirlol, because he's a massive douche apparently. And we can't play because Zunniyaki broke his hand, so waiting for him to recover right now.

Hildegard: You and Hydra had quite some trash talk going on. Was it for the show?

Xandyn: Haha, me and Hydra got really bad history, but we are on good terms now I'd say, we sometimes play RMP together, and don't mind each other anymore.
Offtopic: Arena Pass 2012, just got announced, April 10, yayyyy!

Hildegard: Nice. That is only one week from now. Do you think the system will be ok or is there a danger that win-trading or MMR exploits will skyrocket mediocre teams to the top?

Xandyn: I think it will be fine

Hildegard: Another topic. You are known to provide boosting services for money. Do you think that is ok in a moral sense?

Xandyn: The boosting itself is probably not, charging for such a service sure. However, nothing is in moral sense these days, people make money out of everything you can make money of. So it's hard to judge that. Is it good for the ladder and game competition? def not. :[

Hildegard: A well-known German rogue said he did it for the money but never with a clear conscience.

Xandyn: It's sort of like drug dealing in WoW tbh, hahaha

Hildegard: I would argue different. If I want to do some Charly it will probably only hurt me if I buy it. If you boost, the teams you face are punished.

Xandyn: Yep, but if we didn't boost, nobody would play the game either sadly The top players just playing for the $. So it's either the noobs that are punished or top players that are gone

Hildegard: What is the lesson learned for life from that?

Xandyn: idk ;d I don't try to philosophy about this, I just really think of it as a drug dealing thing, you get a lot of money, you provide people what they need, but do you do a good thing for the society or the mass of people, of course not, that's how drug addicts are born, because of drug dealers. So this is pretty much the same concept. It's not a good thing and obviously bad for the game, but money rules.

Hildegard: Are you still attending school or studying?

Xandyn: No. I stopped any studying at the age of 16 and started making money in WoW mainly, now I am mostly into audio engineering, mastering, my second hobby is music production (which I tend to keep as a hobby, very hard to make money from producing music today).

Hildegard: So where do you want to be in five years?

Xandyn: Where I am right now tbh, just hopefully still alive after the 2012 disasters!! ;d

Hildegard: Do you have any tracks of your music available on the net to listen?

Xandyn: Yup, but I only publish within friends&family until or if I get a record label.

Hildegard: Most gamers cannot really continue to perform at top level after reaching the age of 25. There are few exceptions like the SC2 player WhiteRa. No plans for the afterlife?

Xandyn: haha, I don't think I'm gonna get worse as I age, so not afraid of that

Hildegard: Well said.

Xandyn: tbh Khuna he started 16 or something? Now hes like maybe 23, hell knows, haha, but he just keeps improving and improving and WoW isn't really a game where you need TALENT to succeed, haha, it's not sc2. It's just attitude, and determination. If you have good attitude and determination in SC2, well that's not enough - in WoW it is however.

Hildegard: Do you think anyone can perform at top level?

Xandyn: Well I think it's easy to perform at a top level, but very hard to do so consistently, because of how RNG the game can be and sometimes the game just brainfucks with you, so it's very hard to be consistent player but best players are consistent like Hydra in WotLK, almost never made mistakes. Another the DK hero, most consistent WoW player I'd say, Snutz always been on the top of his game too etc

Hildegard: So, in other words you are not talented you are determined?

Xandyn: Yeah, I don't think I do something that requires talent, I just spent countless hours of time with the correct attitude, to improve, never with the whiny-bitchy attitude, always just one thing in my head: need to improve, I would always analyze what I did wrong, even now, I still think I can improve on many things, and I try very hard to do so, if I wouldn't, I'd simply get out performed by someone new, and I won't let that happen for now, you lose your top game when you stop caring, I won't for some time at least.

Hildegard: Completely different topic. Did you read "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby?

Xandyn: nah, I hate novels

Hildegard: Ok, it is about a guy that creates best of fives for everything in his life. I took that idea and ended every single interview with a best of list.

Xandyn: Haha, cool.

Hildegard: As we have reached the end of the interview it is now your time to name the best five losses you encountered while playing. Meaning those you learned from the most.

Xandyn: The first and the king would be the NAO loss to the RLS, it helped us improve so much, and change our attitude, we will never again underestimate any team, and one thing we learned from that is that you need to know what to do in EVERY possible situation, we knew what to do if they go me or priest, but not if they go Khuna, and that's what they did, so we lost.
And the rest are 2345, hahaha, we try to take every loss VERY seriously, if you ever saw Khuna streaming, people are like 'why are you guys arguing so much?', well that's how we improve, we talk SO much about every loss, even about every win, if we win and we feel like it's hard, we start arguing a lot on what we must do better.
There is a saying that you need to improve after every loss, and need to be happy to lose because you can improve but I think so about winning, too.Every win should be an improvement for you, if you win, it doesn't mean that you can't win in a better way.

Hildegard: Not a real best of five, so two more questions.

Xandyn: lol okay

Hildegard: First: Are you right now the best mage playing World of Warcraft?

Xandyn: It's impossible for me to answer that, I can't know, maybe there is some unknown random little Korean mage dude, who is much better than me, who knows? I try my best to be the best, can't say I am.

Hildegard: Wise answer. Second: What happened during your very first arena match?

Xandyn: Haha, I failed with about everything I did, and had a good laugh about it with my first ever partner, a dannish priest. Then we just played 1350 2v2 games together and I improved the most I ever improved from that.

"There is a saying that you need to improve after every loss, and need to be happy to lose because you can improve but I think so about winning, too.Every win should be an improvement for you, if you win, it doesn't mean that you can't win in a better way."

Shout out too Lunor for being the most amazing friend one can have.Shout out too Hyuru the most amazing, friendly and nice person ive met on AJ
Shout out too Ardnut the second most amazing and friendly person ive met on AJ
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But do people play it as much as they used to years ago? Nope. Because you just get bored of the same game, no matter how good it is.

This was the only thing I disagreed with.

I stopped playing CS because I played competitive CS. When the community started turning into utter shit, and more and more immature kids started playing, leagues started offering less money etc, it just wasn't worth my time.

I still play it, not as much as I used to, but because I also used to get paid to play and actually attempted to win every season of all the leagues I was in, once the prize payouts started getting destroyed and all the top players stepped down and the new ones coming in weren't nearly as exciting, it just wasn't worth it anymore if you weren't in the top 2-3 teams in EU.

I would still drop everything and play 1.6 again if the money was right and the community made it even possible to continue playing.

When the community started turning into utter shit, and more and more immature kids started playing, leagues started offering less money etc, it just wasn't worth my time.

Yeah, but I think the reason the community started turning to a shitty community is because the game just got boring and became more like a job than an enjoyment.

And following the fact that CS is an old game, leagues started paying less too.

Something you see happening with WoW right now, community was always not very bright, but it used to be better than it is right now, and that's for a reason, which I think is - WoW got boring, people pay more time to troll/whine on forums therefore.

Yeah, but I think the reason the community started turning to a shitty community is because the game just got boring and became more like a job than an enjoyment.

And following the fact that CS is an old game, leagues started paying less too.

Something you see happening with WoW right now, community was always not very bright, but it used to be better than it is right now, and that's for a reason, which I think is - WoW got boring, people pay more time to troll/whine on forums therefore.

Shout out too Lunor for being the most amazing friend one can have.Shout out too Hyuru the most amazing, friendly and nice person ive met on AJ
Shout out too Ardnut the second most amazing and friendly person ive met on AJ
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯